Goodbye, Dad

A Farewell to My Father

My dad died yesterday. After a long, painful decline from Alzheimer’s and several other chronic conditions, he finally let go. He passed around 3 a.m. on December 27, 2025. He was 78 years old.

I must admit, I am surprised by how long he held on this past year. On many occasions we were all sure it was the end. Even the doctors believed so. But for whatever reason, his poor, broken body, and maybe his soul, weren’t ready to depart just yet. He lingered, stubborn in the way he always had been, holding on longer than seemed possible.

My dad loved music and words. He was a guitar player and a singer, someone who could carry a tune and lose himself in it. Music stayed with him long after many other things fell away. He also loved language, crossword puzzles, journals filled with his thoughts, lists, and observations. Words mattered to him. They were how he made sense of the world. And he had a great sense of humor, a comedian through and through with a special love for Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges. He was brilliant, but so often locked inside his own mind, and not everyone got to see all that he carried.

He was born in New York in 1947, the youngest of five boys and an identical twin. In his early twenties, he drove gas trucks through narrow neighborhood streets in winter, delivering fuel directly to people’s homes. He also worked at a coffee shop in Kew Gardens, where he experienced the joy of hearing some of the great folk musicians of the time perform live in their early careers. Not long after, he was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and served as a chauffeur in Washington, D.C. He hated it, and the pain of the war stayed with him, even without having seen the combat zones his twin brother endured.

In the late 1970s, he moved across the country to Olympia, Washington. There, working as a bartender at the Rainbow Restaurant, he met my mom. They married, and in 1985 they had me. My dad worked a variety of jobs throughout my life, at the original Olympia Food Co-op, as a DJ at a local radio station, as a para-educator and special education teacher while I was in school, and as a janitor at our church. His work life, like much of his life, was not glamorous, but he did his best with the cards he had been dealt.

He taught me how to bake. How to play poker. He gave me a love for words and an appreciation for music, especially classical. He introduced me to foods I might never have tried otherwise, like pickled herring and sardines. These were things we often shared together, just the two of us. He loved my cooking, and that meant more to me than he probably ever knew.

But my dad had struggles too. I believe now that he was undiagnosed autistic, and he wrestled for much of his life with alcoholism and mental health challenges. Those struggles strained our relationship deeply for many, many years. There was distance, hurt, and disappointment on both sides. Loving him was not simple. Being his daughter was not simple.

And yet, in the end, I found my way to acceptance and forgiveness. Not because the past disappeared, but because I no longer needed it to define everything. I was able to see him as a whole person. Flawed, complicated, loving, and trying.

The last day I saw him was September 9, 2025. I visited him in the hospital, but by then he was so far gone that he didn’t really know who I was. Being there was incredibly hard, and I realized I couldn’t do it again.

Before that, though, I had one last coherent visit, one I will always cherish.

It was late August. He was back home in my mom’s care for a short while. She needed to go out for a few hours, so I came over to sit with him. It was a mild afternoon, sunny but not too warm. I sat in the living room, just outside his room, while he lay in his hospital bed. He talked to me some. He sang to himself, a looping mashup of “You’re a Grand Old Flag” and “Auld Lang Syne,” over and over again.

That day, he still knew who I was.

He thanked me for being there, for helping him, for taking care of him. It was simple, and it was sweet, and it was everything. That was the last time I truly got to talk to my dad, and the last time he knew me. I will be forever grateful that I had that moment with him.

Alzheimer’s took so much from my father, piece by piece. But it did not take his love for music. It did not erase the parts of him that mattered most. And it did not take away the fact that he was my dad, someone who shaped me in ways I am still discovering.

I know that he is home now, free from confusion, free from pain, and surrounded by music once again.

There is so much more to his life, to our family, and to my relationship with him than I can’t express right now. There are memories, joys, and wounds that will likely unfold and be examined more deeply as time goes on. But for now, I say goodbye. Goodbye, Dad. I love you and I will see you on the other side.